


Wild Season

by blackmountainbones



Category: The Mighty Boosh RPF
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst, Baby Boosh, Falling Apart, Getting Together, It was terrible, M/M, Resolved Sexual Tension, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, and still finding a way, everyone was angry, excessive references to the year 2000, explicit gay, let us take you on a journey between time and space, no one remembers what it was like, the Edinburgh times
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-15
Updated: 2019-04-15
Packaged: 2020-01-13 14:13:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18470602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackmountainbones/pseuds/blackmountainbones
Summary: Two men, one photograph, and the shared memory of one hot, hot summer in Edinburgh. From now to then and back again in 7500 words.





	Wild Season

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't really write any explicit smut in my last fic, and I was dying to get off for the first time in a new fandom. Also, I have a tendency to write sideways: when I get stuck on a scene, I write it over and over from different angles. Thus, this fic was born from a pile of scraps that didn't make it into "Ready to Start", all in different tenses and from different POVs. I stitched them together to the best of my ability, but if there are any obvious errors, incosistencies, or confusing bits, let me know! I am a work in progress and appreciate the help.
> 
> Bits of this fic were inspired by the fic, [Black and Blue](https://booshslashhaven.livejournal.com/1195472.html). It's amazing, so do yourself a favor and read it if you haven't yet. 
> 
> This fic is also inspired by *that* photo in the Big Book of Boosh (you know the one), and has been brought to you by the Banks and Steelz album Everything But Words, which I listened to on repeat while writing this (especially their collab with Florence Welch, "Wild Season", hence the name of this fic).
> 
> "Oh is this love? It's not enough  
> Just one sip and I can't stop  
> I'm too far out, too far to reach  
> From below you call to me  
> Don't get too close, I'm flying high  
> I feel to beautiful to die"  
> \--Banks and Steelz with Florence Welch, "Wild Season"

“You promised to help me choose the photos for the Book tonight,” Noel says, pronouncing Book with a capital B. He dumps the box of photographs he’s been holding onto Julian’s bed. Its contents spill out, haphazard. Noel is always making messes, and Julian pretends to be exasperated lest Noel discover how endearing he really finds this talent of his and start doing it on purpose.

“That doesn’t sounds like the kind of promise I’d make,” Julian sighs and picks at his moustache. He wonders, not for the first time, how he has managed to get himself into this situation.

“Well, you were drunk. But a drunk promise is still a promise,” Noel says, rifling through the photos purposefully. “You can’t take it back just ‘cause you regret it when you’re sober.”

“I didn’t say I regretted it.” Regret is a strong word; Julian's more baffled, if anything, but he goes along with it eventually, grabbing a stack of photos and sorting it into piles of _maybe, yes,_ and _no._

He and Noel work together in companionable silence for a while, occasionally interrupting one another to relive some memory triggered by the photographs. It surprises Julian a bit, how easily and often he and Noel smiled, how many moments between now and then he has forgotten, especially the happy ones. 

Julian is sorting through the pile when he comes across the photograph--a big bulky color 8x10, printed by hand in the darkroom by Dave, one one of Julian and Noel, sitting next to each other in Julian’s oversized bed, drinking tea. It's from the early years, their very first summer in Edinburgh. The photo had been taken just hours before he and Noel made love the first time, and the sudden--and vivid--flash of memory makes Julian flush.

Noel notices, curiously looking over his shoulder to see what’s got Julian so flustered. “God, that was so long ago. Our first summer in Edinburgh, do you remember?” It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. It’s a time they don’t often mention. Noel knows why, but according to the terms of their long-standing unspoken mutual understanding he does not mention details.

Julian quirks an eyebrow at him. “Of course I remember.” How could he forget that fateful, sweltering summer? The tiny apartment they’d rented with their mutual friend and fellow comedian Lee Mack was moist and uncomfortable. They would try to beat the heat by going to the park and writing, but the heat would suck all the energy out of them so they’d sit sweltering beneath a tree, doing absolutely nothing. Noel would eventually get bored. Julian, inevitably, would end up sunburned.

When Dave took the picture, they’d been trying to make up for having achieved fuck-all the last three days, ever since the heat wave infused the whole city with a sticky, sweltering sort of lethargy. They were sitting on the bed, bleary from too much beer, desperately drinking tea in an attempt to sober themselves up. Julian remembers wanting Noel with a ferocity that frightened him at the time: they were Siamese twins joined at the head, one mind in two bodies. Touching Noel should have been as easy as touching himself. The fact that it wasn’t was an endless source of frustration for him, and Julian was spending a lot of time doing exactly that, trying to make it all ache a little less. It’s obvious from Julian’s sideways glance in the photo that it hasn’t helped him want Noel any less. The two of them look sweaty and annoyed, as if they are anxious for the unseen photographer to leave them alone.

The photograph, Julian thinks, makes them look impossibly young and also incredibly angry. He’s not sure he’s ever felt as young as he looks in that moment, but he remembers the anger. “It was the year 2000. No one really remembers what it was like, it was awful. Everyone was angry. Especially us.”

“We were very angry because we were so young,” Noel explains, still looking at the photo instead of Julian. “We didn’t know how to articulate our anger and so we would sit in bed and sulk, drinking tea.”

Replace _angry_ with _horny_ , and _anger_ with _lust_ , and you just about had it right, Julian thinks, so he agrees. He holds the photo by the edges, trying hard not trace the contours of Noel’s face with his finger and risk smudging the emulsion. “It was the year 2000. We were lovers. No one really knows what it was like. It was an angry, awful time.”

They stare at the image, remembering.

 

All the windows in the flat are open wide, but it doesn't make the flat feel any cooler: the night air is heavy and still. Not even a breeze stirs in the humid, sweaty heat. Julian stares down into his teacup. The steam is clinging to the sweat on his brow, as well as some of his hair. His sunburned face is pink and itchy but burns whenever he tries to scratch it. The sweat makes the itch worse.

Noel is sprawled out on the rumpled duvet, feeling sticky from the way the cotton clings unpleasantly to his damp skin. Unfortunately, there is nowhere else to sit in Julian’s room--the oversize bed takes up so much space in the tiny room that Julian has to keep his dresser in the hall. “I’m so hot,” he whines. “My brain’s melted.”

“My skin is melted,” Julian says, not at all helpfully. The sweat on his arms is making him itch something fierce, while the legal pad in his lap remains defiantly blank. He is sick of looking at it, so he tosses it somewhere into the sheets where it will stop taunting him.

“Your skin is melted because you’re a pale Northern idiot who doesn’t use sunscreen when he goes outside,” Noel retorts. “It’s your own damn fault, you know. My suffering is worse because I didn’t do it to myself. July did it to me.”

“July is the worst month.” Julian wipes the sweat off his brow and forces himself to take another sip of his tea. “Now I understand why they killed Julius Caesar. It was too bloody hot.”

“Didn’t they kill him in March?” Noel wonders aloud.

He has a point. “Hmm, maybe. The Ides of March _are_ in March, right?” It is all very confusing, so Julian finishes his tea and doesn’t say anything more about it. He liked American history well enough to study it at uni, but that was mostly because there wasn’t much of it. The rest of history tends to get complicated--comparatively, there is an awful lot of it.

Julian leans over to place his empty mug next to Noel’s still mostly-full one on the night table, finally letting himself give in to the heat. Feeling incredibly lazy, he lays on top of the duvet, so exhausted he has no energy to do anything but strip to his pants and vest and sweat in place.

He's close enough that Noel catches a whiff of the unique scent he's been smelling more and more lately: salt and juniper and cigarettes, a mixture between Julian's cologne, his cigarettes, and skin. The scent seems to have intensified in the heat, and Noel edges a bit closer to get a better whiff of him, not really trying to hide what he’s doing.

Julian startles when Noel’s nose nudges the back of his neck. It leaves an oily smear under his hair. “Relax. I’m just smellin’ you.” It doesn’t make Julian any more relaxed, the neurotic bastard, but he stops squirming and lets Noel sniff him. The smell is stronger here, more of the juniper, some lavender, something rooty like dirt that Noel recognizes as vetiver. It’s a good old-fashioned cologne, so outdated it’s gone back around to being on the edgy side of fashionable, perfectly Julian.

He still feels like an eager prep-schooler around Julian. Noel considers himself pretty cool, but he tries at it. Julian’s the kind of cool that doesn’t have to try at all. He just _is_. Noel will always be a bit too anxious to please, too needy for approval, to do what Julian does, and he feels a familiar stab of envy for Julian’s effortless brand of cool.

Julian, who has no idea what he is, nor any  idea how special and strange what they share is. Noel knows it like he knows his own name. It seems unfathomable that Julian does not: Julian is sort of smart but then again mostly he’s an idiot. He wants to tell Julian this, but when he opens his mouth what falls out is “You smell really good”.

Julian has enough experience to know that best mates do not smell each other or sleep in the same bed. They especially do not do both things at the same time. He flushes, and stammers a _thank you_. It is not quite what he wants to say, but it’s as close as he can get to it without being obvious.

Obvious or not, Noel knows Julian wants him. He knows Julian’s had blokes. Noel does not consider himself straight, but he thinks he might need a little more experience to figure out exactly what he is. The fact that Julian knows what he’s doing with a man is particularly appealing if Noel imagines him demonstrating what he’s learned on an eager Noel.

Something crashes outside, breaking the stillness.

“Is that thunder?” Noel wonders aloud. Another rumble, this time, louder, unmistakable.

“Maybe.” Julian tries to remember if it’s supposed to rain tonight. It’s been sunny and hot for a whole week, and he doesn’t think they were predicting rain anytime soon.

Noel rocks up onto his heels, gazing out the window. A breeze kicks his bangs up off his forehead, and he looks eager, innocent, impossibly young; just another reason Julian feels weird about wanting him.

There are only six years between them, but something about the way that Noel acts younger than his age makes Julian feel much wordlier. He’s so used to being the weirdest one in a crowd, that Noel’s obvious hero-worship is an exhilarating change from feeling awkward all the time. Julian gets off on it--Noel sees him the way he sees himself, he thinks, the way the world has yet to see him: an explorer, a man of myriad experiences, whose various addictions are merely eccentricities that have not yet ruined his looks or his dreams.

Lightning flashes in the sky. The thunder rolls in, louder now. There is a charge in the air that makes Julian feel anxious.

He chances a glance at Noel, who seems energized, electrified, eager. He’s resting his elbows on the windowsill and his chin in his hands, leaning into the storm.

The rain hits all at once, big, heavy drops that splatter on impact. Another flash of lightning illuminates Noel’s profile. It is followed by a peal of thunder so loud, the hair on Julian’s arms vibrates.

Noel is still watching the storm, transfixed. The rain is louder, falling harder. A bolt of lightning arcs across the sky, and Noel flinches.

As natural as a reflex, Julian moves to catch him, shuffling on his knees until he’s kneeling behind Noel. His hands are on Noel’s waist, chin resting on his shoulder. Julian, suddenly aware of the intimacy of their position, feels a surge of heat between his legs.

Noel feels the heat of him--Julian’s not exactly hard yet, but his cock is warmer, hotter than the rest of him. He smells like his old-fashioned cologne, and something muskier, more animal underneath. Julian shifts; he’s trying to put some space between them, but Noel grabs him by the wrists and anchors him in place. “Stay.”

“Everything about this is ill-advised,” Julian says, feeling more like a man being led to the gallows than to bed. Another flash of lightning illuminates the room.

Noel bites his lip and turns his head to the side. “Is that going to stop you?” A peal of thunder crashed outside, rumbling low and ominous, loud enough that he almost cannot hear Julian’s whispered admission: “Probably not." A hand sneaks beneath the hem of Noel’s shirt, caressing his hairy stomach, and Noel tenses. When Julian sucks a soft kiss to the juncture of his shoulder and neck, he lets a groan and his whole body shivers with it. It’s almost too much; it’s still not enough.

Julian feels Noel quiver beneath his touch as he trails a line of wet kisses up Noel’s neck. His jaw is darkened and scratchy with stubble that prickles at Julian’s lips until he finally arrives at Noel’s mouth, which is parted with an invitation Julian can’t turn down.

Noel moans into his mouth, and Julian feels a burst of need so intense he goes light-headed with it. He crushes Noel to his chest, letting him feel his erection against the cheek of his arse; Noel moans again and Julian has to break the kiss to breathe.

Outside, the rain is coming harder. The storm is close, thunder and lightning overlapping. They pull at each other’s hair and clothing. Julian is naked soon enough, but Noel’s still wearing his jeans despite Julian’s best efforts to undress him.

He pulls back, putting enough space between them to unbutton the fly of Noel’s jeans. He’s hard in his pants, and Julian hasn’t even touched his cock yet. He likes looking at it, knowing Noel is as affected by their proximity as he is is intoxicating.

Finally Noel moans, pushing his flares and his pants down his legs, kicking the discarded clothes to the floor.

Noel’s dick is not especially long but it looks deliciously thick. His foreskin is long enough that it covers the head even when he’s fully erect. Julian reaches a hand between them to push it back, exposing the swollen head, already wet, and Noel moans again. Another peal of thunder rolls over the sound.

Before Julian can decide on his next move, Noel tips his head back and thrusts his hips into Julian’s hand. He closes his fingers into a fist and squeezes, feeling Noel’s prick jump and leak from the friction.

“Fuck,” Noel whines. “How do you feel so good?” He’s embarrassingly close, and Julian has barely started touching him. He should probably push Julian’s hand away, but he can’t stop thrusting into his grip.

Julian smiles, a bit smug as he watches Noel lose control. His prick pulses a bit, reminding Julian that he’s still hard himself--each touch is slick with heat and sweat, but he knows they will need something more for what he has in mind. With a not-insignificant amount of regret, he takes his hand off Noel to reach toward the night table, fumbling blindly in the drawer until he finds the thin tube of lube. He tosses it at Noel, who looks at him and fidgets self-consciously with the bottle.

Julian knows which question Noel is trying to ask. “Put it on me,” he demands, opening his legs and hoping Noel will take the initiative.

Noel crawls across the bed, already slicking his fingers with the lube. He runs his hand up and down Julian’s crease, feeling unsure. He’s always imagined this the other way around, but he doesn’t want to disappoint Julian by saying so.

Julian grasps his hand around the wrist, guiding him to the tiny, crinkled hole. Noel watches as Julian presses one of his own fingers against it; it shivers for a moment, then yields, swallowing Julian’s finger up to the first knuckle. “It’s easy. One at a time,” he whispers, wriggling his finger in deeper. Once it’s fully seated, he starts moving his finger in small circles.

Noel watches a while more. Eventually, Julian removes his finger and spreads his legs a little wider. Noel drizzles a little more lube on, just in case the old stuff has dried enough to become sticky instead of slippery.

Julian’s body accepts him immediately. Noel feels around, swiping his finger around in circles like he’s watched Julian do to himself.

“Another one,” Julian murmurs, and Noel complies. There is an uncertain moment Julian’s arse tightens around his fingers, but Noel waits, watching Julian breathe, until he feels him bear down and relax. It’s a strange sensation to feel from the inside, and Noel gasps a moan.

He’s never gotten off quite like this from the foreplay alone. He’s always been so anxious to get to the main event with his previous partners; he’s never really taken the time to tease before. As he strokes and stretches Julian from the inside, Noel realizes he likes Julian like this, squirming, growing more desperate as Noel fingers him.

His fingers are a bit short--he can feel the bumpy edge of Julian’s prostate, but he can’t stimulate it directly. He’s driving Julian mad with the tease, and Julian has finally had enough. He reaches in the sheets for the lube, clicking open the cap and covering his hand in the slippery stuff before grabbing Noel by the prick, wanking him a bit to get him slick.

Noel’s hips stutter, his prick throbbing in Julian’s fist. He knows Noel is close, just from opening him up, and Julian leans back, wriggling Noel’s fingers out of his arse, and pulling one of his legs to his chest to expose his rim. He pulls Noel to him by the cock, lining him up.

He hovers above Julian, the lightning playing across his features. Julian can only see Noel in flashes where he flexes above them, trying to work out the proper angle--it makes Julian dizzy, like watching an old timey-movie where everyone moves in stops and starts.

Noel is staring down where his cock touches Julian’s rim, which is loose and red. He pushes forward, watching himself disappear into Julian’s body. There is a strange pressure, and Noel almost pulls back, until Julian’s hand on his arse nudges him forward. The pressure _gives,_ and all of sudden he realizes he’s _inside_ Julian, who is guiding his hips in little circles as Noel slowly presses inside.

Julian’s brow is furrowed, he’s biting his lip. Compared to the whining mess he’d been while Noel was fingering him, he’s strangely quiet, and Noel feels like he should say something to check in, but he’d never done this before, so he just waits for Julian’s face to relax before he pushes the rest of the way inside.

Suddenly, Julian’s mouth goes slack. He sighs and flash of pink peeks out between Julian’s lips--his tongue. Noel leans forward to kiss him, nudging his hips ever closer to Julian’s arse, until he can feel his pubic hair crinkling against his cheeks. 

Noel pushes home. It’s too much, too hot, too wet, too tight. He tries to stop himself, but he’s coming before he can warn Julian. “Fuck. Fuck, I’m so sorry, I couldn’t….”

“Shh,” Julian says, kissing him, long and deep, as he slides off of Noel’s cock and back against the headboard. He reaches for the lube, making a show of getting his still-hard prick wet, before closing his hand around himself and starting to wank.

Julian’s never quite been comfortable wanking for a partner--he thinks it is self-indulgent, selfish act. He’s more comfortable pleasing someone else in these situations than pleasing himself. But the intent way Noel watches him, spent prick still leaping hopefully between his legs, makes him feel cocky, and he moans, just to see Noel’s reaction.

Noel reaches for him, stroking his balls, dipping lower to push his fingers into Julian’s still-stretched hole, which is still wet with his come. His body accepts Noel’s fingers with an obscene slurping sound, and Noel starts fingering him in earnest, rubbing at the bumpy place inside that makes Julian quiver and moan best as he can.

Julian strokes himself faster, his breath coming out in little grunts. His hips snap up and down, into his fist, onto Noel’s wide, wet fingers, faster, faster still. He feels it getting closer, and just as he lets go, a massive flash of lightning turns the world white.

Immediately afterwards, everything goes dark, and for a split-second, Julian wonders if he's come so hard he's gone blind.

 

When Julian comes back to himself, all the lights are out. He panics, sitting up in bed, breathing hard.

His momentary panic wakes Noel, who heads over to the window to inspect the situation. The rain is softer now, but the wind is still howling something fierce. “Fuck, the power’s down in the whole neighborhood,” Noel observes. “Look. All the streetlights are out.”

Julian creeps over to the window. None of the apartments across the street, nor the greengrocer on the first floor, have their lights on either. “Shite,” he says. He is thirty years old, but still doesn’t have it together enough to have things like a flashlight or bottled water on hand in case of emergency.

Noel watches him freak out a moment--Julian looks is so hapless that he starts laughing. “It’s not the end of the world, Julian.” He puts his arm around Julian’s waist and nudges him back to bed. Julian complies bonelessly, with a pliability reminds Noel of their earlier encounter and Julian’s heretofore unexplored submissive side. The thought makes Noel’s recently-quiescent penis throb with interest.

The darkness makes Julian clingy. He runs his hands up and down over Noel’s torso as if to reassure himself that Noel is still there in the flesh. They make love again in the dark, Julian inside Noel this time, pushing at him with deep, trembling thrusts, in, and out, and in again, so, so slow. He keeps them both on the edge of orgasm for what feels like hours, until Noel’s rim starts to feel raw and tears burn at his eyelids.

One particularly rough thrust makes him squeeze his eye shut, and the liquid trickles out onto his cheeks. Julian moans, licking the salty wetness from his face; he is thrusting in earnest now. Noel takes a shivering breath, and the tears keep coming, a flood of them, and Julian drinks them up. When Julian comes, the wet heat of it takes Noel by surprise, and he comes too, without even touching himself.

When they finish, the storm is starting to die down. There is only an occasional flash of lightning, the thunder rumbles softly in the distance. But the rain still beats on, and they curl together under the blankets, drifting into sleep.

 

A crash of thunder wakes Julian a bit later: the earlier lull in the storm must have been temporary. Julian wonders how long he’s been sleeping. There is no way to check--the power is still out, the room draped in unnatural darkness. He can’t have been asleep long.

He shakes his head, noticing that Noel’s nose is pressed to his chest. Julian nudges him gently, and Noel grumbles, but falls immediately back to sleep. Julian's thirsty and has to piss, but he's not sure their other roommate, Lee, is home or not, so Julian grabs a pair of pants from the pile of clean laundry on the floor near the foot of the bed before deciding he’s decent enough to make his way to the kitchen for a glass of water in a blackout. 

He thinks he’s alone, until the moment he hears Lee’s voice from the shadows on the couch.

“Julian. Tell me you didn’t.”

Julian nearly drops his water. “Fuck, Lee. You can’t be creeping up on a man like that in the middle of a blackout.”

Lee gets up from the couch, walking towards the kitchen counter where Julian is standing. He looks Julian over with an appraising eye. “Julian. Tell me this isn’t what I think it is.”

Julian’s wearing nothing but his pants and a red trail of beard burn from Noel’s stubble across his torso. He crosses his arms across his chest, trying to hide the most obvious evidence, but Lee has already seen everything he needs to to know what’s happened.

“Listen, I like Noel. He’s absolutely mad, but he’s good for you,” Lee says, a little more gently. “He doesn’t let you brood too much, gets you off your arse. And you’re great on stage together.”

Julian knows what’s coming, and he holds himself tighter, bracing against the inevitable.

“But you aren’t just comedy partners anymore. It’s--I don’t know what it is. I don’t know if you know, either. You might think you know, but you don’t. You won’t, until you’re so caught up in each other that you become each the other’s world entire.”

Julian rubs his palms against his ears. Lee’s not the first to say it--Julian’s heard it before, knows it’s true, but he doesn’t _care_. They don’t know the hunger that eats him alive from the inside, how it never stops. If they did, they would _understand_. They would not expect him to resist. “It’s too late,” he murmurs, aching with the truth of it.

“Look, you're my friend. I want this to happen for you. For both of you,” Lee sighs. He pulls a packet of fags from his shirt pocket and lights one with a thoughtful puff. "But you don't need to be lovers to make it work."

Julian wishes he had a cigarette. He refills his glass of water and sips, thinking about how to tell Lee that everything about Noel feels like an act of fate. There is no avoiding it, no way to stop it, no way to contain it. Do or die. Life or death. All or nothing. There is no way to do it differently. He’s sick of trying, literally sick--his stomach aches with it day and night, his skull throbs from the pressure of having to fit two minds inside it.

Sex makes it better. It eases the pressure, brings it down to a level that’s manageable. “Maybe that’s why we need it.” He doesn’t mean for it to sound so raw.

“You share a stage, an apartment, and the same absurd sense of humor. ” Lee exhales a dramatic plume of smoke. “You share a bed, too, and there will be no going back. There will be nothing left.”

Julian doesn’t know how to tell him it’s too late to try. Instead, he eyes the packet of cigarettes hungrily, until Lee takes pity on him and offers him a smoke.

“You two are like two black holes orbiting one other. You will eat each other alive, from the inside out. Get out before he burns you up,” Lee warns.

Julian ashes his cigarette into the sink. It extinguishes with a satisfying hiss as he thinks.

“Have you ever met someone whose voice sounds like the voice inside your head?” Julian finally asks. He stares at the cigarette burning between his fingers, feeling maudlin and ridiculous. “Because that’s what it’s like with Noel. I knew his voice before I ever heard him speak--I’ve been listening to it my whole life.” The only thing that’s ever quieted the never-ending monologue is Noel’s touch, but Julian knows Lee would never understand. He’d just use it as proof that Julian has lost his mind already.

There is a rustling sound in the hallway. A blur of darkness stirs in the shadows, and Julian doesn’t even have to see to know it’s Noel, standing silently in the hallway wearing only a t-shirt and his dirty pants.

Julian takes a deep breath, staring at the dark shape of Noel in the hallway. “You can’t know. You can’t even imagine it. This is unlike anything, ever. You have no idea.”

Noel’s frozen on the threshold, listening. He has only heard Julian’s answer--he does not know the question--but he _knows_ the feeling Julian is describing. He feels the same way. He stands still and aching for Julian, though his body is still sloppy and raw with their recent lovemaking, leaking a bit.

“Julian--”

“Lee. Leave it,” Julian growls.

Noel chooses that moment to wander out of the dark hallway into the kitchen. He knows he looks mussed enough as it is, so he stretches, makes his voice sleepy and stupid, so Lee and Julian will not catch on that he’s more awake than he appears to be. “What were you two on about?”

Julian and Lee share a significant look. Noel knows they are going to lie before either says a thing. He doesn’t bother listening to their answer. Nor does he bother to hide the fact that he’s following Julian to his room after he says goodnight. Lee stands and smokes and watches Noel follow Julian down the hall and disappear into his room together, shaking his head.

Noel doesn’t give a fuck what Lee thinks of them. Lee doesn’t know--no one does. _This is unlike anything, ever_. What he and Julian have defies explanation. The words to describe it haven’t been invented yet; trying to articulate it makes Noel feel like he is speaking in tongues. He sure as hell isn't going to be able explain the inexplicable to a man like Lee, who is always trying to be _logical_. Fuck trying.

 

It’s all over the newspapers the next day: an errant bolt of lighting frying an entire section of the grid. Noel jokes he is afraid of the dark so Julian won't make him leave his bed at night. When the power comes back on three days later, they both know Julian will let him stay. They will sleep together until the end of summer. Neither man bothers to give a name to the things they do together. Like so much else between them, each time they fall into bed feels inevitable, irrevocable, undeniable. Sex will make it better until it makes it worse: sex makes them fight.

 

Noel isn’t sure what he expected, but this isn’t it. Like most of his sexual impulses, he’d figured he would be able to sate his curiosity and move on. But sex makes it worse: the empty space inside him where Julian isn’t _burns_. He can’t get enough. Sex makes him even more insatiable for Julian, wildly jealous of every moment he spent with anyone who isn’t Noel. They yell and scream about it.

For his part, Julian likes to think he is above petty jealousies, but it turns out that he is equally as petty (and just as jealous) as Noel. Sex makes it worse: it’s so intense that everything else feels dull in comparison. He can’t see, can’t smell, can’t think, can’t hear, can’t taste anything else: his senses are full of Noel and nothing more. Everything else must be more intense to compensate. They throw glasses and slam doors about it.

It comes to a head six weeks later. The unbearable heat still hasn’t let up. The city is going mad with it: rates of car accidents and violent crime are skyrocketing. Noel and Julian fight and shag and fight some more.

It’s another hot day, one of the worst they’ve had in a while. All day, he and Noel seethe with bad humor. Their rehearsal is a complete bust--they skip lines, forget their blocking, explode at each other backstage. Words are said. Bottles are thrown. Julian catches a glimpse of himself, red-faced and screaming, in the mirror, then leaves, terrified at what loving Noel is making him into, terrified because he does not know how much further they can go before something snaps.

He wanders the streets of Edinburgh for an hour, trying to find some relief from the heat and the awful, twisted, furious thing inside him. But it never lets up, and eventually, tired and hot, he turns back home.

As soon as he ducks into his room, Julian knows he is not alone.

“Noel,” he says, poking at the lump in the duvet.

Noel ignores him. He hides under the duvet, pretending to be asleep. “Noel,” Julian says again.

This time he answers. “Yeah.”

Julian lifts the blanket off him. “What are you doing here?” Noel feels silly and exposed, lying in Julian’s bed wearing only his pants and a skimpy shirt.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Noel asks. He tilts his head back and opens his mouth; his chest rises and falls as if he’s laughing though he makes no noise. The streetlights glint off his teeth-razor sharp. “I came to apologize to you.” He reaches for Julian, anxious to put their bodies together and put this horrible day behind them. He knows he can put everything right if he can put his hands on Julian.

But Julian dodges him. “Noel. This can’t happen,” he says. They both know he keeps saying it, that it can’t happen, right before it happens again. There’s a taste in the back of his throat, coppery, blood-red, claustrophobic. The darkness ripples, and suddenly Noel is standing next to him, close, closer, and Julian can’t breathe. There’s too much of Noel, and not enough air between them.

There is no escaping him--Noel is everywhere around him, in everything he touches. There is no safe space, no place he can go where Noel isn’t. He’s on stage, backstage, in his room, in his bed, in his fucking _head_ …

Noel’s taking off his tacky shirt, his torso a long streak of white in the dark room. He turns to Julian, mouth open wide, and Julian knows he is going to steal a kiss before it happens.

At the last moment, Julian turns his head. Noel’s lips smack against his jawbone. The sound makes Julian cringe. “This can’t happen,” he repeats, and Noel laughs again, in that same silent way, not laughing at all.

“It keeps happening.” Noel puts his hands on Julian’s chest, cupping his tits. Noel feels his nipples drawing tight beneath the sweaty cotton and puffs a breath on Julian's lips. “Nothing stops it.” Nothing  _can_. Noel has given up on trying. They are so close that Julian feels him under his skin. He is everywhere Julian is. There is no escaping him.

Julian closes his eyes, trying to find the words to break this terrible enchantment, this terrifying hold Noel has on him. Lee warned him this would happen, the night of the blackout; as usual, Julian didn’t listen until it was too late. _You don’t have to be lovers to make it work. You will not stop until you're each the other's world entire._ Julian didn’t believe him then, but he knows better now.

Noel’s stroking his eyelids. Julian feels them twitch, trying to open. He forces them shut. He needs the distance, to block Noel from coming any further into his space. It is quiet for a long time before he speaks.

His senses are razor-sharp. He’s not sure he’s relaxed in weeks, not since this ill-advised romance began. He doesn’t need to open his eyes to see the sharp edges in everything, all the ways in which things can cut. He can smell the coppery, salty tang of Noel’s adrenaline, the way his scent blooms as he begins to sweat. “I can share the stage with you, or I can share your bed,” Julian says, stomach lurching with the truth of it. “I can’t do both.”

Noel wavers, feeling shellshocked. “Julian, please. Don’t make me choose,” he whispers, pleading, the emotion spilling out into the spaces between his words feels as thick and wet as blood in his mouth. “Not between the two things I want most in the world.” He wants Julian everywhere--on stage, in bed, in between. He cannot fathom giving any of it up.

Julian stares at him, mouth going tight. He’s afraid that if he speaks, he will take it all back, apologize, soothing Noel with kisses until they end up in bed yet again. He’s not surprised--Julian has always spoiled Noel, giving him everything he asks, even when it is something he cannot afford. 

But as much as Julian wishes he could, he knows he can no longer be Noel’s lover and comedy partner both. It’s too much, to stand next to him on stage every night, to lie next to him in his bed every night. Julian is no longer alone, not even in his own mind, not even for a moment. It terrifies him.

“There’s not enough of me for both!” Julian shouts, his voice reverberating in the small room.  “Don’t you know? I hear your voice in my head. I dream you asleep and awake. I look in the mirror and I expect to see your face looking back at me. I’m disappearing. One day I won’t be able to see myself at all. It will just be you.”

Noel knows the feeling. He tries to say as much, but what comes out of his mouth is, “I don’t want you to disappear.” His voice warbles, razor-thin, around the tears he’s trying to swallow.

Julian opens his eyes: Noel’s still standing in the middle of the hotel room, shirtless. His nipples are drawn tight, he looks impossibly young, fragile. Julian wishes he could look away. The air is thicker and more humid than ever. “Noel,” Julian gasps around his name. It feels like water in his lungs; he is going to drown of it. “You have to choose.”

Noel feels stricken. He tries to consider, but each option makes him feel like he’s choking. “I can’t,” he gasps. Julian is _everything_. They fit together every way two men can fit. Noel can’t imagine him either in his bed or onstage, can’t imagine having only one for the rest of his life and not the other, not ever again.

“Not choosing is still a choice.” Even as he says it, Julian knows Noel is not choosing him. Anything less than _I choose you_ is still _I choose the Boosh_. Julian wishes that they weren’t already in his room--he feels like slamming doors, smashing dishes, or something equally as dramatic.

Instead, he settles for throwing Noel’s discarded shirt in his face. “Cover yourself,” Julian growls, and Noel scrambles back into his shirt, looking ashamed. He’s been quiet for longer than Julian can ever remember him being quiet; it’s unsettling. 

Noel dawdles in the middle of Julian’s room, half looking for his jeans, half procrastinating, knowing he will not be invited back here again if he leaves. He knows that Julian is furious with him, and he’s furious with himself for being unable to give Julian the answer he needs.

Eventually he runs out of reasons to stay. Noel's hand hovers over the doorknob; he knows if he opens it, he will never be allowed in again. He clears his throat. “I love you, Julian.” It’s the first time he’s said it in private. It feels different when it's just between the two of them, and Julian's eyes start shining. Noel’s seen the movies--he knows love fixes everything. Love cannot be denied. It seems unfathomable that Julian would try.

But Julian does exactly that. “You think you do,” Julian snorts. “This--this isn’t love. This is madness. This is--this is so many shades of codependent. But whatever it is, it isn’t _that_.” He reaches over and opens the door. It will be the first time Noel has slept alone in months; his sheets are full of dirty clothes and dust. That Julian is just on the opposite side of the wall, trying to remember how to sleep by himself too, seems like nothing more than a cruel trick. Noel tells himself it will be better tomorrow; they will get over it.

 

They do get over it, but it is not so easy as all that. In the meantime, Noel moves back to London; Julian follows some months later. Somehow they find each other in the same bar his first night back in town. It feels like an omen, a sign that they can try again. They begin writing what will become Arctic Boosh, and they avoid mentioning that hot, angry summer as best as they can. They will be friends once more, the best of friends, even, but not lovers, and this time, it will last through a radio series, two live tours, three seasons of BBC 3, and the selection of photos for their latest mutual endeavor, The Mighty Book of Boosh.

 

Julian comes back to himself slowly, surfacing from from the memory as if waking from a dream. Everything feels hazy, the line between reality and memory blurred and indistinct.

“We were so angry,” Noel murmurs, agreeing. He feels a powerful longing for something long gone, so he traces photo-Julian’s jaw with his fingernail. It doesn’t make him want to touch actual-Julian any less. “We were angry because we were in love.”

“We were young and in love and so very, very mad about it.” Julian realizes it sounds ridiculous--who ever heard about being angry because you were in love with someone? It doesn’t make sense. Love is supposed to make things kinder, sweeter, not angrier.

Noel smirks. “God, we were such wankers.” He’s entirely aware of the double entendre, and so is Julian, who chuckles.

“Were we _ever_ ,” Julian groans. He mimes touching something nasty, and Noel laughs. It’s funny because it’s _true_. It’s been a long time since they’ve been able to talk about that summer without yelling or crying or breaking stuff, and it makes a part of Noel that’s been dormant a long time ache terribly.

“It was the year 2000,” Noel repeats, tracing the image of Julian for the tenth time tonight because he is afraid to touch actual-Julian, afraid the electricity that had once burned so hot it melted a resistor and caused a three-day blackout in the streets of Edinburg would arc between them if he tried. “I was young and in love with a man, absolutely mad for him. I loved him so much I was mad at him for making _me_ mad.”

“It was the year 2000,” Julian agrees. “We were young and in love. We didn’t know how to articulate our lust, so we would sit in bed and sulk, drinking tea.” Nine years have passed since that wet, hot, _angry_ summer. Much has changed, Julian thinks, glancing over at the night table. Two mugs of now-lukewarm tea are going cold on its surface, while he and Noel sit and sulk in bed together about of the ever-present mutual sexual frustration that they refuse to indulge.

Julian notices, now, that Noel is still stroking photo-Julian with his fingernail. He has been touching photo-Julian ever since they pulled the photo out of the archives. Impulsively, he captures Noel’s hand in his own before he can talk himself out of it.

A pulse of static electricity arcs between them, at once familiar and strange. Noel shivers, hand going slack in Julian’s palm. He’s bit alarmed that their fingertips will leave greasy marks on the glossy print, ruining it, so he uses his free hand to place it on the _yes_ pile, hesitating there and asking _All right?_

Julian nods. _All right._ Their hands have fallen onto his olive-drab khaki covered lap, still joined, and a familiar smell wafts up between them, a smell Noel knows instantly--Julian’s cologne, lavender and leather and dusty vetiver, hasn’t changed.

Had this been the year 2000, they would have fallen into bed together, fallen into each other, instantly. But now, nine years later, Noel is content to hold Julian’s hand and let the charge build as they linger beside each other without moving. It is still recognizable as the electric chemistry on which their relationship has thrived all these years--Noel feels a flash of deja-vu, and suddenly he’s back in the photograph, sitting on the bed next to Julian, trying not to give too much of himself away, and failing spectacularly at it.

Julian’s fingers tighten around his own. The year is 2009. They are no longer young; it is no longer a young man’s angry, all-consuming passion joining them together, though he and Julian still spark with it sometimes. They are older, wiser with time and experience, able to savor the bitter along with the sweet.

They are on the cusp of something, Noel thinks, unsure exactly what that might be until Julian reaches up to trace Noel’s eyebrows with his thumbs. The rest of his fingers cup the line of Noel’s jaw, nudging his mouth open with small, gentle circles. His face is so close that Noel can see only an indistinct brown blur before Julian’s moustache prickles at his lips. Noel closes his eyes and almost falls back in time through the places where the fabric of time and space is worn thin. It seems inevitable that it should rip. Perhaps it has already, and they are already adrift in time, still orbiting the moment where the timelines split between the years 2000 and 2009.

If nothing else, a hole in time and space would explain why Julian is kissing him, but perhaps there is a simpler explanation for the curious phenomenon: they are in love, and already feeling less angry about it this time around.

**Author's Note:**

> I am broken in the mind-tank: the sillier the source material, the darker and angstier the fic I write. I feel a crack(fic) binge coming on (don't send me to rehab)...
> 
> Thanks for reading! Kudos and comments keep the muse fed. She's got a feeding kink, so the more kudos and comments you leave, the more fic you get!
> 
> Follow me on tumblr @the-stoned-ranger if you wanna :)


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